The Biden administration is trying to thwart Trump on its way out
No surprise, really.
First we have the border wall materials that are being auctioned off. This not only hurts Trump, but it hurts all taxpayers, because it means to build the wall he’ll have to buy new materials at a higher price:
The Biden administration is using its final weeks to haul a massive amount of border wall materials away from the southern border to be sold off in a government auction, an apparent effort to hinder President-elect Donald Trump’s effort to secure the border, The Daily Wire has learned.
Videos obtained exclusively by The Daily Wire from a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent show unused sections of the wall being hauled away on the back of flatbed trucks from a section of the border just south of Tucson, a hotspot for illegal crossings during the Biden administration. The agent estimates that up to half a mile per day of unused border wall is being moved.
“They are taking it from three stations: Nogales, Tucson, and Three Points,” the border patrol agent, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, told The Daily Wire. “The goal is to move all of it off the border before Christmas.”
Secondly we have the continuation of the prosecution of some of the remaining J6 defendants, and the re-definition of the meaning of a pardon by Merrick Garland’s DOJ, which now says acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt:
“[A] pardon at some unspecified date in the future … would not unring the bell of conviction,” federal prosecutors argued in a Jan. 6 case before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols. “In fact, quite the opposite. The defendant would first have to accept the pardon, which necessitates a confession of guilt.”
The pronouncement is the latest attempt by the Justice Department to salvage the legacy of its Jan. 6 investigation, which leaders say is the most sweeping criminal probe in American history. Trump has pledged to unravel that probe with the stroke of his pen by granting clemency to many of the nearly 1,600 people who have been charged for their roles in the attack on the Capitol four years ago.
The legal significance of presidential pardons, and whether they imply guilt, has been debated in courts for decades. The Supreme Court has opined that pardons often carry an “imputation of guilt” even if the consequences for that guilt are erased. And the Justice Department has previously concluded that even if pardons eliminate criminal consequences, those convicted of crimes can still face punishment in other forums, like professional ethics boards.
“A pardon … does not erase the conviction as a historical fact or justify the fiction that the pardoned individual did not engage in criminal conduct,” the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote in a 2006 opinion.
Do you see the difference? It is true that some of the J6 defendants pled guilty (often under threat of much greater sentences if they don’t, of course). And no, pardons don’t erase that in the legal sense. But pardons do not come with the necessity for “an admission of guilt” by those pardoned. The do imply guilt, or they can imply guilt, and they don’t legally wipe away the confiction, but that’s a far cry from a confession of guilt through the acceptance of a pardon.
And here’s the ramping up part:
Activity in the J6 investigation accelerated the month before the election. At least 16 individuals were arrested; home security camera footage obtained by RCI shows the heavily-armed pre-dawn FBI raid of a subject in California on October 17.
Shortly after the election, DOJ officials instructed attorneys working on J6 cases to carry on regardless of the pending change in leadership. “[Federal] prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Capitol Siege Section received guidance this week about how to proceed in pending Jan. 6 cases … including a directive to oppose any Jan. 6 defendant’s requests for delays,” Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News reported on Nov. 9. “Prosecutors are instructed to argue that there is a societal interest in the quick administration of justice and these cases should be handled in the normal order.”
Here’s one of these recent cases (emphasis mine):
On December 6, Lamberth not only sentenced Grillo to 12 months in federal prison but took the unusual move of remanding him into immediate custody; judges usually allow a defendant to report two to three months following sentencing. Lamberth’s decision appeared to make sure Grillo spent some time in jail before a presidential pardon spared him.
In a 13-page sentencing document explaining his reasons for imposing such a harsh move, Lamberth again criticized what he believes are attempts to “minimize the events of January 6.” Lamberth then erroneously claimed five police officers died as a result of the protest. “One can only wonder what further horrors might have transpired if our elected officials had not gotten out in time. No matter what ultimately becomes of the Capital Riots cases already concluded and still pending, the true story of what happened on January 6, 2021 will never change.”
The “true story” does not involve the death of any officers as a result of the protest. And yet the judge appears to think it does.
Re: (1): as if the United States were short on steel.
The only irrecoverable cost is the cost in human lives.
Ideological fanatics are incapable of refraining from sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
re-definition of the meaning of a pardon by Merrick Garland’s DOJ, which now says acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt:
In the case of the blanket pardon issued to one Hunter Biden covering any and every Federal crime he might have done over 11 years, he’s admitting to what? Guilt of anything and everything?
No surprise, really.
–neo
No surprise, really.
But the interesting bit, knock on wood, is that this is all relatively penny-ante. Except for:
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Biden Keeps the Billions Flowing to Iran
Choosing not to enforce oil sanctions finances Tehran’s terrorism.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-iran-oil-hamas-israel-gaza-df192c53
__________________________________________
It’s worse than Team Clinton sabotaging the W keys on the White House typewriters the night before the George W. Bush team entered the White House.
Still it’s sad and it’s predictable.
Lo! I worry about bigger things. Is Biden trying to eff-up Ukraine to the point of WW 3?
Tune in next week!
And Lamberth was appointed by Reagan. No one is perfect, but that was a huge miss.
A pity that people who think there were actually witches in Salem are so prominent.
All the people convicted were pardoned and therefore must have been guilty, and therefore witches. . . .
@Mary Catelli,
Speaking of my own ancestor, accused witch Martha Carrier, no, she was not pardoned. She said she would “rather die than confess to a falsehood so filthy”, and so she was hanged, even though confessing to that falsehood would have saved her life. However, she was exonerated, which means the powers that be decided she was innocent all along.
Would have been nice if they decided that one BEFORE she was hanged, but them’s the breaks.
I suggest the apparatchiks abusing their powers and willfully working against the interests of the United States lawyer up. Things are about to change.
Royce Lamberth is a tyrant and a big, fat one at that.
An update — last night on Fox News Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick told Laura Ingram that the state of Texas has budgeted $5Billion for border security and will simply outbid any other buyer of the steel wall segments. It will remain in Texas possession until it can be turned over to the Trump administration. Bidding starts at $5 per piece.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1867412563656683730
Jimmy wrote: “Lamberth was appointed by Reagan. No one is perfect, but that was a huge miss.”
In Reagan’s time, there was a different “norm” for judicial appointments.
I believe the POTUS asked the district’s senators for recommendations, & often accepted that.
Some things were less partisan, back then.
Re: Royce Lamberth’s lies in his 13-page sentencing document:
I’m furious that judges have such unfettered freedom to lie in their rulings & official documents!
We need to be able to impose actual consequences on judges (and DA’s lawyers, …), quicker & sharper. Unlike waiting for a retirement, or death, or impeachment, etc.
I have a personal grudge against Lamberth myself. When I lived in DC, I was called for jury duty, in DC’s “Murder, Inc,” trial. It was in the paper as the largest jury pool ever called: thousands of people, long intrusive profiling questionnaires, etc. I went to the courthouse early in January, and because I actually find jury duty interesting, I didn’t throw it and I wasn’t dismissed on the spot, but told to wait to hear from them.
Months passed, and I forgot about the matter. My husband and I booked a prepaid walking holiday on Offa’s Dyke in Wales for the end of May. Two days before we were due to leave, I got a summons to come in as one of pool of 100 finalists. Judge Lamberth asked us to tell him if for any reason we were not able to serve. I raised my hand and told him about how I’d booked this holiday, not refundable, blah blah blah. Lamberth asked how I could have done such a thing, knowing that I might be called. I answered that I thought, given my odds were about one in 10,000 of being called, that I might have wanted to proceed with my life in the intervening months, my life wasn’t something to put on indefinite hold. Lamberth said it wasn’t an indefinite period, it was to the end of the trial. I stupidly tried to point out that that *was* an indefinite period, and Lamberth said: “If you don’t show up on Monday morning you are going to jail for six months.”
Man, did that shock me. I went home and called my lawyer/friend and asked him, “Can he do that?” My friend said, “He’s a federal judge, he can do almost anything he wants.” However, we did write an appeal and send it over Lamberth’s head to the chief clerk of the court, who did issue some sort of injunction allowing me to go on my trip. Although I prevailed against the s.o.b. I am still sobered by Lamberth’s abuse of his power, and appalled by accounts of how he is abusing it still.
NancyB, I’m glad you had a lawyer/friend with good advice!
Yes, many judges behave arrogantly regarding the lowly citizen.
Narcissist egos in power with nearly no accountability are rotting our justice system.
Nothing remotely new or surprising here…but FWIW:
Related…to EVERYTHING “Biden”….
“Joe Biden & Co. are doing as much damage to the US as they can before they leave”—
https://nypost.com/2024/12/14/opinion/joe-biden-amp-co-are-doing-as-much-damage-to-the-us-as-they-can-before-they-leave/
Related, continued…
“The Biden administration is trying to thwart
TrumpAMERICA on its way out”…“‘Preposterous’: Biden Admin Extends Liability Protection To COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturers”—-
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2024/12/14/preposterous-biden-admin-extends-liability-protection-to-covid-19-vaccine-manufacturers/
I guess this means that Fauci & Friends can also expect protection….
(Make that “Fauci & Fiends”…)